Whatever chicanery goes on inside the buildings, the grounds of Sydney University are still pleasant to walk around. I drifted up from the old linguistics building, past something new and soulless and then strolled by the Fisher Library to the new set of wide steps put in to run down to Victoria Park. There used to be a gap in the fence and a rough track up from the park worn by feet that wanted to go in the logical, short-cut direction. The authorities eventually recognised the reality and they’ve done a good job. In a few years the steps and rails will look as if they’ve always been there.
A cold breeze had got up and I was underdressed in a light jacket, shirt and jeans. Some of the students on the steps had taken a better reading on the day and wore or carried coats. They probably had umbrellas in their backpacks. Spring in Sydney.
I went down the steps and decided to walk a couple of k’s around the paths. I’d neglected my gym-going lately and a brisk walk to raise a sweat might help me to re-dedicate myself. The pool wasn’t open yet but pretty soon the lappers would be at it in the early morning before work and the mums and dads would be hauling the kids in for lessons at twenty bucks a half hour. I’d been taught to swim by Uncle Ian, who I realised much later was no kin but a man having an affair with my mother. It hadn’t exactly been a ‘chuck him in at the deep end’ kind of instruction, but near enough. I got the hang of it quickly enough and survived the surf at the south end of Maroubra beach for many years. I hadn’t been in the water much in recent years and I could probably do with a few lessons. Maybe, I thought, but let’s not make too many good resolutions all at once.
I stepped it out around the park for half an hour with my mind running over the few minor cases I had on hand, how much I disliked working from home, and what I had begun to think of as the enigma of Dr Elizabeth Farmer. By the time I’d walked home I felt sufficiently virtuous and energised to knuckle down to the computer and complete reports on the current cases-resolving a couple, opting out of one, putting another on a low heat backburner. I had my standard contract on file. I printed one out, found Dr Farmer’s card and faxed her a copy. She’d be up for an eight hundred dollar retainer and a daily rate of four hundred, plus expenses. Nice to know she could afford it. I guessed that a nearly professor was on a pretty good screw and her inheritance wasn’t peanuts. Nice to think of some of it coming my way.
After faxing I went back to the email and found that she’d sent a brief message to say that she’d assemble the information I wanted when she got home and send it through. A big plus that, an efficient client, especially one who looked like the Germaine Greer of twenty-five years ago with a cool grip developed by hitting woods or metals or irons, or whatever they call them. But I had the idea that Dr Farmer wasn’t interested in male partners at golf or anything else. Just a feeling.
I was scribbling down a few points on the interview with Elizabeth Farmer, working towards drawing up a list of things to do and the order to do them in, when the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick it up.
‘Mr Hardy, my name is Karatsky, Marisha Karatsky. I’m in desperate need of your help. My daughter is missing. She’s only fifteen and I’m very troubled about her. I…’
The desperation was evident in the shakiness of her voice and the shortness of her breath. I picked up the phone.
‘Hardy speaking. Try to calm down, Ms Karatsky. I know it’s hard. Maybe I can help. Where are you?’
‘I… thank you, Mr Hardy, I’m right outside, on my mobile.’
Reluctantly, I’d scribbled my home address on a few cards I’d left here and there after losing the Darlinghurst office. I said something encouraging and hung up. I went downstairs, opened the front door and ushered the woman in. She was small and dark with thin features and what my gypsy grandmother called gypsy eyes-dark and hooded with the skin below them looking bruised. Grandma Lee had them, so did I to a degree. Ms Karatsky wore a long leather coat buttoned to the neck and boots with medium heels. Her hair was a wiry tangled mass. No makeup. There were no rings on her hands and she was shaking with tension as she leaned against the wall.
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
The spring wind had brought spring rain and the shoulders of her coat were wet.
‘Come in and sit down. Can I get you something? Coffee? A drink?’
‘I’m sorry. Have you got any cognac?’
‘I’ve got brandy.’
‘Brandy, yes, of course. Some brandy, please.’
Cheap stuff for lacing coffee, but with the wind busy outside as the light died and the rain spattered on the roof, just the thing. She took off her coat and I hung it over the stair rail. She was wearing a red silk blouse and an olive green knee-length skirt. One sleeve of the blouse was buttoned at the wrist and the other had apparently lost its button and flapped freely. Happens to me. Gold watch, light gold chain around her neck.
I got her seated in the living room after clearing some newspapers from a chair and brought in two wineglasses and the bottle. I haven’t got any snifters. I poured the drinks, handed her one, pulled over a stool I use for reaching the higher bookshelves, and sat. It felt more professional than slumping into one of the saggy armchairs.
Marisha Karatsky took a good pull on the brandy and let it slide down. She didn’t exactly shudder but I got the feeling she was used to something smoother. I had a slug and it tasted okay to me as the first drink of the day. But that always tastes good, whatever it is.
‘Take your time and tell me what’s happened.’
She told me she worked freelance as a translator, providing subtitles for German, Russian and Polish films and television programs. Her father was Polish, her mother Russian and the family had lived in East Germany before immigrating to Australia. Her daughter, Kristina, was wild and easily influenced, she said. She’d left home two months before. Her mother had traced her to a shared house in Tempe from a scribbled note she’d found in Kristina’s room. She went there but the place was empty, apparently uninhabited. Neighbours said it was a house where people came and went. She hadn’t contacted the police.
‘It’s not easy for people like me, East Germans, to deal with the police. Also, Kristina uses drugs. I want to find her but I don’t want to put her in prison.’
‘What about her father?’ I said.
She shook her head and took another drink, as if the mention of the word needed a defence. Then she smiled, showing perfect, small white teeth in a broad, thin-lipped mouth. ‘A youthful indiscretion. Nothing more.’
It sounded like a subtitle.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If you can give me a photograph and description of her there’s a few moves I can make. I can go to the Tempe place and ask questions. I know people who. . monitor the sort of scene Kristina’s got herself into. I can ask around and try to pick up a trace, but I probably don’t have to tell you it’s a dangerous world with many casualties. And this is a big country with lots of ways to lose yourself. Some of them safe, some not.’
She put her drink carefully on the floor, went across to her coat, took a manila envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to me. Inside was a photograph of a dark-haired girl heading fast towards young womanhood. She looked quite like her mother with slightly broader features and a sulky expression that was perhaps trying for sultry. It was only a waist upwards shot. She wore a black T-shirt with ‘Heart Ache’ printed on it in pink. Earrings, several, nose-ring, one.
‘She could be beautiful,’ Marisha Karatsky said, ‘but she can be a devil. Do you have any children, Mr Hardy?’
Not something I talked about much but this seemed like an appropriate time. ‘A daughter. I didn’t raise her but we got together later. She’s in America and doing okay, last I heard.’
‘You are lucky. There is more information for you.’
I shook out a page of typescript. Kristina’s date of birth was given, her height and weight-175 centimetres, 56 kilos-much taller but skinny like Mum-and a short list of names and places.
‘Those are some of her friends and some of the places she went to. I’m not sure if they are all still…’ she waved her hands expressively. ‘Around.’
I nodded. ‘What about school?’
‘Ah, another reason for no police. She stopped going to school last year. The truant service can’t be very good because no one has contacted me. I must tell you that she never stayed at any school very long-always absent, pretending…I love my daughter, Mr Hardy, and I believe she could become a successful person. She is musically talented and can dance like a thing on fire. But she is lost at the moment and I don’t want for her to be lost always. Will you help me? I can pay you. I earn good money.’
‘I’ll be honest with you, Ms Karatsky. A resourceful young person with experienced friends can be impossible
